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    It’s Tommy Paul vs. Novak Djokovic in an Australian Open Semifinal

    Paul, the first American man to reach an Australian Open singles semifinal since Andy Roddick in 2009, must now face Novak Djokovic.MELBOURNE, Australia — The tennis breakthroughs keep coming for Tommy Paul and his American friends.Taylor Fritz became the first of their peer group to win a Masters 1000 title last year at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif.A few months later, Frances Tiafoe became the first of their group to reach a Grand Slam semifinal in singles, pushing eventual champion Carlos Alcaraz to five sets.Now Paul, a smooth-moving talent who grew up near a small tennis academy run by his family in Greenville, N.C., has become the first American man to reach an Australian Open singles semifinal since Andy Roddick in 2009.For Paul, who defeated American newcomer Ben Shelton, 7-6 (6), 6-3, 5-7, 6-4, in the quarterfinals on Wednesday, all this is no coincidence. “I think it applies a lot,” Paul said. “You see Fritz win a Masters 1000, and I think all of us we’re all happy for him, but we’re all like, ‘OK, he did it. We can do that.’“And then ‘Foe makes semifinals of the U.S. Open and had chances in the semis, and who knows what would have happened if he had won that match? So, you see that happen, and you’re, like, ‘All right, that’s awesome. I’m happy for him, but I can do that.’”The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.No Spotlight, No Problem: In tennis, there is a long history of success and exposure crushing champions or sucking the joy out of them. In this Australian Open, players under the radar have gone far.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Endless Games: As matches stretch into the early-morning hours, players have grown concerned for their health and performance.Paul, 25, has taken the hint, with ample encouragement from his veteran coach Brad Stine, who began working with him in September 2019 when Paul was outside the top 100 and had recently lost funding and coaching support from the United States Tennis Association and was denied a wild card at the 2019 U.S. Open.“That was based on some disciplinary things,” Stine said.But Stine was impressed by Paul’s openness to coaching and change — and his ability to handle world-class pace from the baseline — and though there have been some setbacks and lots of text messages, Stine feels Paul’s game is maturing and his commitment growing.“We went from him identifying himself as a counterpuncher,” said Stine, “to being a guy that’s looking for forehands and trying to dictate and dominate the court with the forehand, which was a big change because Tommy’s backhand had always been the more solid side of his game.”“I think everyone should be really excited for that kid,” Paul, left, said of Ben Shelton.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesStine already has helped a young American succeed down under.He was part of Jim Courier’s coaching team in 1992 and 1993 when Courier won back-to-back Australian Open singles titles and jumped in the Yarra River with Stine to celebrate.“He’s done so much for my game,” Paul said of Stine. “In the past four years, he’s really taken me up many, many levels. I’m really appreciative, and hopefully we can keep going. I’m going to make him jump in the Yarra if we win this thing. I’m not going, but I’m going to make him do it.”That swim, perhaps not the wisest idea in view of the Yarra’s pollution levels, remains a long shot.Paul’s opponent in his first Grand Slam semifinal on Friday will be none other than Novak Djokovic, who has won a men’s record nine singles titles at the Australian Open and who extended his winning streak at Melbourne Park to 26 matches on Wednesday night, demolishing a fine player, the No. 5 seed Andrey Rublev, 6-1, 6-2, 6-4.“I could not be happier with my tennis,” Djokovic said, his left hamstring still tightly wrapped but his movement and ball striking beyond reproach.Paul has practiced with Djokovic but never faced him on tour. Even though Djokovic and Rublev were still on court during Paul’s post-victory news conference, Paul said he wanted the ultimate Melbourne challenge.“I probably have a better chance of winning if it’s Rublev but to play Novak here in Australia would be awesome,” Paul said.He has more support than when he started. His mother Jill MacMillan, a former college player at East Carolina University who was his first coach, arrived in Melbourne on Wednesday morning after flying from Newark to Los Angeles to Melbourne in economy class in her scrubs. She is an audiologist and had only a carry-on bag after scrambling to make the trip on short notice after Paul beat Roberto Bautista Agut in the fourth round.“I texted Tommy once I was on my way and told him, ‘Your mom did something really crazy today. I just jumped on a flight from work,’” MacMillan said. “And he was like, ‘Unreal!’”Twenty-four hours and not much sleep later, she was sitting in the players box.“Oh my gosh, I was so high on adrenaline, I didn’t feel it,” she said. “But Ben made it pretty hard for him, though.”Chris McCormack, left, Paul’s agent, watched the match with Jill MacMillan, Paul’s mother, and Paige Lorenze, the player’s girlfriend.Aaron Favila/Associated PressShelton, a 20-year-old lefthander from Gainesville, Fla. playing in his first Australian Open, continued to impress in only his fourth tour-level event, pounding aces or aggressive second serves on break points and fighting back to force a fourth set even though he struggled for much of the match to return Paul’s serve.“I think everyone should be really excited for that kid,” Paul said, after shaking Shelton’s hand twice and embracing him at the net.There is genuine camaraderie among this rising generation of Americans, and Paul is now guaranteed to join Fritz and Tiafoe in the top 20 on Monday.He already has defeated top-drawer opponents: beating Rafael Nadal and the world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz in 2022. He is an all-surface threat who grew up playing on green clay at his family’s club in North Carolina and won the French Open boys’ title on red clay in 2015, beating Fritz in the final. Last year, he reached the fourth round at Wimbledon on grass.Now, he has made his deepest Grand Slam run on a hardcourt. The Yarra River, which still flows past Melbourne Park, awaits if Paul can beat the odds (and Djokovic) and become the first of his peer group to win a major title.“Actually, I think he will be the one taking a swim if he wins,” Stine said with a grin. More

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    With ‘Little Steps,’ Victoria Azarenka Is Making a Deep Run

    Azarenka has taken a more process-oriented approach than in the past. But the outcomes have been good, too, as she’s in an Australian Open semifinal for the first time since she won it all in 2013.MELBOURNE, Australia — Dinner had arrived in the player restaurant for Jessica Pegula’s coach, David Witt, but it did not come with a spot in the Australian Open semifinals.Pegula, who was the highest-seeded player left in the women’s singles tournament at No. 3, had just been beaten convincingly, 6-4, 6-1, on Tuesday by her friend Victoria Azarenka in Rod Laver Arena.“Vika played pretty well,” someone said, using Azarenka’s nickname.“No,” Witt replied quickly. “Vika played beyond well. We weren’t expecting that at all. That was her best match in a long time.”Hardcourts, like the ones at Melbourne Park, have long been Azarenka’s happiest hunting grounds. A former world No. 1, she won back-to-back Australian Opens in 2012 and 2013 and reached the U.S. Open final in both those seasons, losing classic matches to Serena Williams each time. In 2020, a resurgent Azarenka beat Williams in a U.S. Open semifinal and gave Naomi Osaka quite a tussle before losing in the final.Though many of Azarenka’s former rivals, including Williams, are retired, she has played on, juggling motherhood with the demands of an international tennis tour and attempting to focus on the challenges at hand instead of what might have been.With her ball-striking ability, athleticism and innate combativeness, Azarenka, 33, a 6-foot Belarusian, had looked set for a long run near the very top of the women’s game. But she was knocked back by depression, injuries and an extended custody dispute with Billy McKeague, the father of their son, Leo. The boy is now 6 and living with Azarenka and relatives in Boca Raton, Fla., and attending school.“Obviously, he is watching some matches, but he definitely wants his mom to be home,” Azarenka said in her on-court interview Tuesday.After struggling through some of her early matches in Melbourne — losing the opening set to Madison Keys in the third round by 6-1 — Azarenka clicked into a higher gear against Pegula, the rising American who had not dropped a set in this tournament before their quarterfinal match.“I’m very excited,” Azarenka said. “I feel like I definitely appreciate being on the court more now.”She will face another tough assignment in a semifinal match Thursday against Elena Rybakina, the reigning Wimbledon champion. Rybakina’s powerful and precise serve could provide quite a challenge for Azarenka, long one of the game’s premier returners.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Victoria Azarenka’s Deep Run: The Belarusian tennis player has taken a more process-oriented approach than in the past. The outcomes have been good so far.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Endless Games: As matches stretch into the early-morning hours, players have grown concerned for their health and performance.A New Style Star: Frances Tiafoe may have lost his shot at winning the Australian Open, but his swirly “himbo” look won him fashion points.But Azarenka has often sounded more interested in the process than the destination during this tournament. She said she has tried to train herself to focus on “little steps” rather than her more traditional, results-based goals.“I need to have patience,” she said. “When you win big, it’s hard to be patient, so you want to get the things going.”She felt she did not get ahead of herself on Tuesday, and though Pegula and Witt kept expecting Azarenka’s form to dip, she maintained a high level after the torrid start, full of deep groundstrokes and attacking flourishes, which gave her a 3-0 first-set lead.“I feel like sometimes when I play her, she can go off a little bit because of how she plays, but tonight it doesn’t really feel like she went off at all,” Pegula said. “That just made it super tough. At the same time, I feel like I gave her a lot of unforced errors, a lot of mistakes.”Uncomfortable in the slower conditions with Laver Arena’s roof closed because of rain, Pegula had to scrap for nearly every game she won, navigating six deuces before holding serve in the fourth game. Though she did break Azarenka at 5-3, Pegula dumped a short shot into the net at 15-0 in the next game that stopped her momentum as Azarenka broke back to win the set and take command of the match for good.Pegula, 28, a late bloomer who overcame major hip and knee injuries early in her career, is now 0-5 in Grand Slam singles quarterfinals, losing at that stage in the last three Australian Opens.“Obviously I’m upset about tonight, but at the same time, I’m putting myself in these positions to go deep in these tournaments,” she said. “I think I’ve proven that. I’ve been super consistent.”She continued: “Hopefully it comes together. I definitely want to do better. I want to do more.”“I knew I have to play fast, and I have to not give her the opportunity to step in, and I have to mix it up,” Azarenka said. Darrian Traynor/Getty ImagesAzarenka can certainly relate. She has had to battle her own perfectionist streak that sometimes left her overwrought and in tears during matches in her early years on tour. She has continued to be tough on herself and said that smashing rackets after a first-round defeat to Ekaterina Alexandrova in Ostrava, Czech Republic, last October was a recent low point.“I felt like especially last year my tennis wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t really mentally there,” she said. “I played with a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety, and it really was difficult to be brave and make the right choices in the important moments.”Asked about the fears, she said: “Fears of failing is a big one. To not be able to do what I want to do. So subconsciously sometimes it stops you from doing it. I think the point of being uncomfortable is scary. I’ve had panic attacks before.”But, she said, she had worked a lot on her mind-set.“Because when you achieve great success, sometimes you become conservative, and you become more hesitant to try new things,” she said. “This off-season, I was like: ‘You know what? I will just be open-minded and try new things and put my head down and work hard.’”The 2022 season was full of unexpected challenges, such as being among the players from Belarus and Russia who were barred from playing at Wimbledon because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Azarenka, one of Belarus’s most prominent athletes, has called for peace and said she was “devastated” by the war. She was also part of the WTA Player Council, along with Pegula, that supported the decision to strip Wimbledon of the rankings points typically awarded at the tournament in retaliation for the ban.Ukrainian players protested when Azarenka was included in the lineup for an exhibition ahead of last year’s U.S. Open to raise funds for relief efforts in Ukraine. Azarenka did not take part in the event.“It’s a very complicated and very delicate situation to manage,” said Maxime Tchoutakian, her coach. “She had a hard time, but it was a period that was difficult for many players, and they have to try to manage it the best they can.”Azarenka has said that she has donated clothing to help Ukrainian junior players and provided other financial support. The war continues, and it remains unclear whether Wimbledon will readmit Russians and Belarusians this year. But Azarenka, seeded 24th in Melbourne, on Tuesday looked particularly fit and focused: She was quick into the corners to defend but also decisive in moving forward and attacking to keep Pegula from settling into the sort of rhythm that suits her exquisite timing and flat hitting so well.“I knew I have to play fast, and I have to not give her the opportunity to step in, and I have to mix it up,” Azarenka said. “Because at hip level, there’s nobody better than Jess. She just doesn’t miss.”Azarenka sliced. She threw in looping forehands, ripped cocksure swing volleys for winners and served more consistently than usual against a player who had been among the leaders in Melbourne in breaking opponents’ serves. It worked, and now, for the first time in a decade, Azarenka is back in a semifinal at the Australian Open, the tournament she twice ruled and where her photo features in the tunnel of champions that players pass through on their way into Laver Arena.Her life has changed so much since 2013, as Leo makes clear. He was with her in Melbourne last year, joining her on the rostrum at a news conference after one of her matches. But he has school commitments this year and did not make the journey.“A few more days here, and I’ll be back,” Azarenka said to her son in her on-court interview after extending her stay with her play.“Honestly,” Witt said, “I don’t think she could have played better.” More

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    An All-American Australian Open Quarterfinal: Ben Shelton vs. Tommy Paul

    Ben Shelton and Tommy Paul are playing for a spot in the Australian Open semifinals. The United States has waited a long time for something like this.MELBOURNE, Australia — Maybe one day, and sooner rather than later, American men swimming in the deep end of the pool at Grand Slam tennis events will stop being noteworthy.That is how it was during the first 40 years of the modern era of tennis, which began in 1968. During that era, some combination of players from the United States — Ashe, Smith, Connors, McEnroe, Agassi, Chang, Sampras, Courier, Roddick — almost always lurked, or even played each other, in the final days of the biggest tournaments.Those days now feel so long ago, an era that was destined to end after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the spread of wealth to Eastern Europe and the growing popularity and accessibility of a previously inaccessible sport beyond its traditional power centers in the United States, Australia, Britain, France and a few other countries in Western Europe.When Ben Shelton and Tommy Paul square off in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open on Wednesday afternoon (Tuesday night in the United States), it will be the first time two Americans have met this late in a Grand Slam event since Andy Roddick played Mardy Fish in Melbourne in 2007.Since one of them has to win, the United States is guaranteed its first Australian Open semifinalist since Roddick in 2009. A third American quarterfinalist, Sebastian Korda, retired with a wrist injury, down, 7-6 (5), 6-3, 3-0, to Karen Khachanov of Russia. Korda could have made it two American Grand Slam semifinalists for the first time since 2005.And yet, since early last summer, American men’s tennis has been having a moment that had been promised ever since the United States Tennis Association realized it had a serious problem on its hands some 15 years ago. This is what the U.S.T.A. had in mind when it began a development academy in 2008.The program has changed since then, switching to an emphasis on periodic camps for promising young players rather than having them leave home as young teenagers. But the goal has always been to develop a critical mass of players to compete regularly at the most important tournaments. American women, led by Serena and Venus Williams, could always do it. Not so for the men. Then last summer, results began to show.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.No Spotlight, No Problem: In tennis, there is a long history of success and exposure crushing champions or sucking the joy out of them. In this Australian Open, players under the radar have gone far.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Endless Games: As matches stretch into the early-morning hours, players have grown concerned for their health and performance.A New Style Star: Frances Tiafoe may have lost his shot at winning the Australian Open, but his swirly “himbo” look won him fashion points.“This is what we’ve been working for,” Martin Blackman, the general manager for player development at the U.S.T.A., said as he sat on a bench across from Centre Court at Wimbledon in July.There, four American men made the final 16. Taylor Fritz barely lost to Rafael Nadal in a fifth-set tiebreaker in the quarterfinals. Two months later, at the U.S. Open, Frances Tiafoe became a sensation on his way to a semifinal loss to Carlos Alcaraz, the eventual champion and world No. 1.Those tournaments were a little different though.Wimbledon had barred Russians and Belarusians from participating because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That took three dangerous opponents — Daniill Medvedev, Andrey Rublev and Khachanov — out of the draw.At the 2022 U.S. Open, Tiafoe was the only American to make it to the fourth round. But his victory over Nadal and near-upset of Alcaraz, combined with Fritz’s title at Indian Wells, Calif., in March, produced a new level of confidence among a collection of players 25 and younger, several of whom have been traveling, training and playing together since their early teenage years.“We expect to do well,” Paul, 25, said last week in an interview on a sun-splashed terrace in Melbourne as he watched another promising young American, Jenson Brooksby, beat Norway’s Casper Ruud, the second seed and a finalist at the French and U.S. Opens last year. “We probably expect to have at least a few of us in the second week. That’s our goal, and I know some of us want to go deeper.”He also served what turned out to be notice that afternoon.“We got Ben Shelton coming,” he said of the 20-year-old N.C.A.A. champion.Paul has taken the young player under his wing since Shelton turned professional in the middle of last year.“Kind of helped me navigate some of the early stages of a professional career,” Shelton said of Paul on Monday night, after his fourth-round win over another young American, J.J. Wolf, 24. “He’s been a good friend.”A good friend but never an opponent. They have hit just once, warming up together in Ohio last summer. Paul’s plan ahead of the quarterfinal was to watch videos of Shelton’s matches. What he will see is a dangerous lefty, seemingly fearless beyond his years, with a thumping serve and a fast-improving power game from the baseline.Shelton is still taking classes at the University of Florida and is determined to get his degree. He said he was lucky the semester had just started, so balancing school work with preparing for his matches was not a problem.Shelton also had the good fortune of a kind draw. Ranked 89th in the world at the beginning of the tournament, he has yet to face a seeded player. Most of his opponents have been lower ranked. One received a wild card. Another survived the qualifying tournament.Paul, ranked 35th, peaked at 29th in the world last year. He won the French Open boys’ singles title in 2015. Since then, though, he and his close friends and countrymen — Tiafoe, Fritz and Reilly Opelka — have watched players they beat as juniors achieve more than they have. But he believed he would play in the late stages of a Grand Slam event, even if, as he put it, some people might have considered him somewhat delusional in recent years.Born in New Jersey and raised in North Carolina, where he grew up playing on clay courts in Greenville, N.C., Paul is an all-court player with quick feet. He also has a frightening serve that topped out at 137 miles per hour during his fourth-round win over Roberto Bautista Agut of Spain. The ball off his racket sounds like wood popping in a campfire.Between points, and even in his service motion, there is a languid quality to his movements. Then the point begins and, if he is on, Paul is all grit, touch and force. But he is also comfortable banging and scrambling as long as the point requires.Lately, he has been playing with a freakish display of calm that betrays none of his internal tension. It’s the aspect of his game that he has worked on the hardest over the past 18 months.“That’s the hard part of playing tennis, right?” he said. “You got to keep calm.”That is especially true during five-set matches in Grand Slam events that include plenty of peaks and valleys, both physical and mental. Shelton, whose father, Bryan, played on the ATP Tour in the 1990s and now coaches both his son and the men’s team at Florida, has endured some early lessons in that. Two of his four matches have gone the distance. One ended in a fifth-set tiebreaker.For Paul and Shelton, doing Tiafoe one better and becoming the first American man to make a Grand Slam final since Roddick lost to Roger Federer at Wimbledon in 2009, still may be too high a mountain to climb. The winner gets a likely semifinal match with Novak Djokovic, the nine-time Australian Open champion with 21 Grand Slam titles who is rounding into form as the tournament wears on.Paul would relish that chance anyway. He has waited a long time for it, and so has his country. More

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    Jessica Pegula Flies Under the Radar at the Australian Open

    Jessica Pegula leads a cohort of players into the quarterfinals that few outside the locker room were paying attention to before the tournament. In this intensely mental sport, that was a good thing.MELBOURNE, Australia — Jessica Pegula does not land on many magazine covers. Her steady game does not produce a lot of highlight-reel moments. She is the world’s third-ranked player but has floated largely under the radar during her steady rise to the top of tennis.At the Australian Open this year, that approach is looking more and more like a secret to success.Iga Swiatek, the world No. 1 from Poland, lost Sunday in the fourth round and became the latest top-ranked player to talk about the burdens of being at the top.Ons Jabeur and Maria Sakkari, stars of the recently released Netflix series “Break Point,” failed to make it to the second week. Coco Gauff, the 18-year-old American star, has her face on billboards at nearly every tournament even though she is ranked seventh in the world and has never won a Grand Slam or a Masters 1000 tournament. Neither have most teenagers, but not surprisingly, organizers scheduled three of her four matches in Rod Laver Arena, the tournament’s center court, and a fourth in Margaret Court Arena. She, too, lost Sunday in the fourth round.Who is still around? A diverse collection of big-hitters and all-court players who are both young and older but hardly A-list celebrities. They include Elena Rybakina, last year’s Wimbledon champion who has been largely snubbed by the tennis world the past six months; Jelena Ostapenko, the hard-hitting French Open champion whose days of being expected to win ended a few years ago; Donna Vekic of Croatia, a talented veteran currently ranked 64th in the world.On the men’s side, if someone had said a week ago that three Americans would make the quarterfinals but their names would not include Frances Tiafoe or Taylor Fritz, a breakout star of the U.S. Open and world’s ninth-ranked player, that would have sounded strange. But it’s the much less heralded Tommy Paul, Sebastian Korda and Ben Shelton who are alive.Tommy Paul celebrated his fourth-round win at the Australian Open. He will meet Ben Shelton, a fellow unseeded American, in the quarterfinals.Lukas Coch/EPA, via ShutterstockThen there is Pegula, who made the quarterfinals of three Grand Slams last year and lost to the eventual champion and world No. 1 each time but has never commanded much attention. She said last week that she had heard that Netflix cameras might be following her around to gather material for the second season, but hasn’t noticed them.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Victoria Azarenka’s Deep Run: The Belarusian tennis player has taken a more process-oriented approach than in the past. The outcomes have been good so far.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Endless Games: As matches stretch into the early-morning hours, players have grown concerned for their health and performance.A New Style Star: Frances Tiafoe may have lost his shot at winning the Australian Open, but his swirly “himbo” look won him fashion points.“I’m definitely interested,” she said. “I want to have more exposure.”But does she really? In tennis, there is a long history of success and exposure crushing champions or sucking the joy out of them (See: Osaka, Naomi).Swiatek, who won 37 consecutive matches last year in addition to the French Open and the U.S. Open, said Sunday that recently, and especially in Australia, she found herself wanting to not lose rather than to win.“I felt the pressure,” she said.Ostapenko, who blasted Gauff off the court in straight sets Sunday, knows something about that. After she came out of nowhere to win the French Open in 2017, her life turned upside down. She felt like everyone expected her to win every tournament, “which is crazy, because you are still a human and you cannot feel great every day,” she said. “A lot of attention from everywhere outside the court, like photo shoots and all those kinds of things. You became more popular in your country. Everybody is watching you.”Currently ranked 17th, Ostapenko said she came to Australia hoping to begin a climb back into the top 10.It’s worth noting that inside the locker room, no one is under the radar. Every player knows every other player’s strengths and weaknesses, who’s hot, who’s nursing an injury or having a crisis of confidence.Both Gauff and Pegula said that they were not at all surprised that Rybakina, who played her first two matches on outer courts, just as she had for much of the summer and fall, had taken out Swiatek with her flat, thumping power that is ideally suited to the court conditions here.“It’s a motivation to win even more,” Rybakina said last week of her court assignments.Likewise, everyone in the locker room knows Pegula, who beat Swiatek earlier this month, has been playing the best tennis of her life, moving fast across the court, giving away so few points, forcing opponents to take whatever they can get from her, which hasn’t been much.“That locker room is the most educated place in the world,” said Pam Shriver, the Grand Slam doubles champion who recently started coaching Vekic part-time.Like everyone else here, Shriver, who was courtside Monday as Vekic beat Linda Fruhvirtova, a gifted 17-year-old from the Czech Republic, is pondering the so-called Netflix curse. No player featured prominently in “Break Point,” which was released 10 days ago, made it past the fourth round. Three withdrew with injuries just days before the tournament. Shriver wondered whether the players who had decided to participate in the series had taken the time to think through the effects that being part of a high-profile series might have on their psyches on the eve of the year’s first Grand Slam.“There are self-promoters and there are contenders,” she said. “Contenders don’t generally work on raising their profile or becoming influencers.”Often an athlete’s profile will grow organically based on results, but that doesn’t mean they do not have to manage the challenges of fame.Gauff has been in the spotlight since she was 15 years old and upset Venus Williams at Wimbledon.“There’s definitely a difference,” she said last week. “I feel like without being in the spotlight, you come more under the radar, less pressure, you don’t feel as many people online are probably going to, like, hate you if you lose.”Gauff laughed as she said that. But two days later, in the hours after her loss to Ostapenko, when she teared up during her post-match news conference and talked about how frustrated she was after working hard in the off-season, that joke seemed to hit closer to home.Donna Vekic is playing in her 11th Australian Open. “I’m kind of on the map again,” she said.Daniel Pockett/Getty ImagesVekic, 26 and playing in her 11th Australian Open, knows about pressure on a teenage tennis star. As a 15-year-old, she was one of the sport’s next big things. In early 2021, she had knee surgery and struggled for more than a year to manage the pain. Her game finally clicked again in San Diego in October, when she rolled past a series of top-20 players, beating Sakkari; Aryna Sabalenka, ranked fifth in the world; and Danielle Collins, the 2022 Australian Open finalist, on her way to a three-set loss in the final to Swiatek.“From the end of last year, I’m kind of on the map again,” she said in an interview Monday.Coming into this tournament, Vekic just wanted to play at a high level, regardless of her results. Then she woke up Monday to text messages from two close friends telling her she was going to win the Open, which was the last thing she wanted to hear. She told herself that if she beat Fruhvirtova, she was going to turn off her phone.Even that might not do much good at this point. In the final eight of a Grand Slam, there is nowhere to hide, especially for Pegula. She is the highest seed left and plays the two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka in the quarterfinals. By the numbers, she is the favorite now, even if there are three other players who have won Grand Slam singles titles still in the mix, who, like her began this journey outside the spotlight.“Doesn’t really feel like I’m the highest left,” she said, “though I guess that’s a cool stat.” More

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    Ben Shelton Masters a Tricky Fifth Set at the Australian Open. Holger Rune Does Not.

    Neither Shelton, 20, nor Rune, 19, had gone this deep at the Australian Open. Playing in fourth-round matches on different courts, only one advanced to the quarterfinals.MELBOURNE, Australia — Two young tennis players born just six months apart were in different arenas but in the same predicament on Monday: trying to figure out how to prevail in a fifth set.Neither Holger Rune nor Ben Shelton had been this far at an Australian Open.Shelton, a 20-year-old American lefty with a friendly manner and an unfriendly serve, had never played in the Australian Open at all until this month: not even as a junior.But both powerful and hungry youngsters were on the brink of reaching the quarterfinals on opposite ends of the vast concourse at Melbourne Park that leads from the main court, Rod Laver Arena, to John Cain Arena.Rune, a 19-year-old from Denmark who entered the tournament ranked 10th in the world after a breakthrough 2022 season, was in Laver Arena facing the No. 5 seed Andrey Rublev in one of the featured matches of the day.The unseeded Shelton was somewhere closer to Off Broadway in Cain Arena facing J.J. Wolf, another unseeded American aiming for a breakthrough.Laver Arena was full. Cain Arena was not, with only a few fans seated on its sunny side on a warm yet hardly torrid day.But there were still shouts, roars and plenty of shifts in momentum in both venues before both matches arrived at a decisive fifth set, part of the learning curve for a professional men’s tennis player.Rune and Shelton had each played just one five-setter before arriving in Melbourne. Rune cramped in his five-set defeat to Kwon Soon-woo of South Korea at last year’s Australian Open; Shelton ran out of steam in his five-set defeat to Nuno Borges of Portugal at last year’s U.S. Open, his only previous major tournament.“Five sets in the heat, I barely survived,” Shelton said. “My fitness wasn’t near what I needed it to be at. So, I’ve worked really hard these last five or six months to get to where I want to be.”He has hired Daniel Pohl, the German fitness trainer who has worked with Naomi Osaka. Shelton was smart on Monday: toning down his natural exuberance early against Wolf to save fuel; dominating the fourth-set tiebreaker; jumping out to a quick lead in the fifth set; and then building on it to win, 6-7 (5), 6-2, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (4), 6-2.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Victoria Azarenka’s Deep Run: The Belarusian tennis player has taken a more process-oriented approach than in the past. The outcomes have been good so far.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Endless Games: As matches stretch into the early-morning hours, players have grown concerned for their health and performance.A New Style Star: Frances Tiafoe may have lost his shot at winning the Australian Open, but his swirly “himbo” look won him fashion points.Wolf, 24, never broke Shelton’s serve in five sets, getting only two break points. Now Shelton will play in another all-American match against Tommy Paul, 25, in the first Grand Slam quarterfinal for both. Paul, already an established threat on the tour with victories over Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz, advanced with a victory, 6-2, 4-6, 6-2, 7-5, over the No. 24 seed Roberto Bautista Agut of Spain.With Sebastian Korda already in the quarterfinals, there are three American men among the final eight in Australia for the first time since 2000 when Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and the much lesser-known Chris Woodruff reached that stage.Shelton, who won the 2022 Division I men’s singles championship at the University of Florida and then turned professional that August, has had a fine draw here, facing no opponents ranked in the top 50. His returns need lots of work but after saving a match point in the first round against Zhang Zhizhen of China, he has continued to rise to the occasion, embracing the matches and the post-match interviews with the same enthusiasm.In only his second major tournament, Shelton has gone one round farther than his father and coach, Bryan Shelton, whose best Grand Slam run was to the fourth round at Wimbledon in 1994. He will also pass his father’s best career ranking of 55, breaking into the top 50 next week.“I try not to think about that at all,” Ben Shelton said of the comparison. “My dad’s the reason I’m here. I wouldn’t be here without him. They say you do better on your second try, and I think the way he coaches and explains the game to me and all the life experiences he’s given me, and my mom as well, are pretty much the sole reason I’m in the position I’m in.”Holger Rune after losing to Andrey Rublev in five sets.Martin Keep/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere is a gentle side to Shelton, much gentler than his running forehand, while Rune stalks the court with his long, elastic strides like a predator in search of the next meal.Still a teenager, Rune is already an imposing, intimidating physical presence, with rippling muscles in his legs and nervous energy as he adjusts his backward ball cap, picks at his shirt and shifts his weight as he prepares for the next rally.“I have so much passion to play matches, to compete,” he said. “To play tennis in this event is what I’ve been dreaming about since I was a little kid, so I’m leaving it all out there.”That approach worked in November when he swept through the field at the Paris Maters indoor event, beating Novak Djokovic in the final. And it looked like it would do the job again Monday when he served for the match at 5-3 in the fifth set against Rublev, the combustible shaggy-haired Russian who seems to throw his lean frame, and a percussive grunt, into each shot with every fiber of his being.In all, Rublev reeled off eight consecutive points before Rune held serve to 6-5 and then earned himself two match points in the next game.Rublev saved the first with a wide serve that Rune could not handle and the second with a crosscourt forehand that Rune could not handle.Andrey Rublev reeled Holger Rune in with great serves and one bold forehand that landed on the outer edge of a sideline.Martin Keep/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHe made it into the tiebreaker, only to see Rune jump out to a 5-0 lead. On other occasions, Rublev might have lost the plot, shouting at the injustice of it all, breaking rackets or pounding himself on the side of the head. But he kept it comparatively together this time, and he had time to recover because all the majors use a first-to-10-point final-set tiebreaker.Rublev slowly reeled Rune in with great serves and one bold forehand that landed on the outer edge of a sideline that left Rune wincing.Rublev soon led, 9-7, with two match points. Though Rune saved the first with a first serve, he had to produce something more extraordinary on the second: a running backhand pass winner down the line after Rublev chose not to hit to the open court with a swing volley.It was 9 all, and it was loud, very loud, with Rublev biting on his shirt collar and Rune pointing to his ears to ask for even more volume from the fans. Instead, he got an unlucky bounce.On Rublev’s next match point at 10-9 he hit a backhand return off Rune’s second serve that smacked into the net cord. Rublev was sure the ball was going to fall back on his side of the net. Instead, it trickled over and bounced on Rune’s side for a match-ending winner.“The luckiest probably moment of my life,” Rublev said. “Now I can go casino. If I put for sure I’m going to win.”Both men dropped their rackets, and Rublev dropped to the ground. He rose with tears in his eyes to embrace the youngster whose time, one expects, will come given all the tools already at his disposal.But potential is one thing, converting it another, and it may not be easy for Rune to shake off such a defeat. The image from Monday that will stick with observers was Rublev celebrating with both arms raised and Rune slumped in a chair behind him, both hands covering his face.“Of course, it’s not the end of the world, but it hurts,” Rune said. “I have to look at the other side, that there’s a few things I could have done better, so when I’m playing the next Grand Slam this won’t happen again hopefully.”Rublev, 0-6 in Grand Slam quarterfinals, gets to keep playing in this tournament, though perhaps not for long considering that he will next face Djokovic, a nine-time Australian Open champion who looked like a man back on a mission (and a healthy hamstring) on Monday as he demolished the Australian Alex de Minaur, 6-2, 6-1, 6-2.“The only chance I have is if I play my best tennis,” Rublev said.That sounds about right. More

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    Elena Rybakina Defeats Iga Swiatek in Australian Open

    Iga Swiatek could not find an answer to the power game of Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion who is seeded No. 22 in Melbourne.MELBOURNE, Australia — After starting this Australian Open in the hinterlands of Court 13, Elena Rybakina made it to center stage on Sunday for her fourth-round match with No. 1 Iga Swiatek.Rybakina ended up stealing the scene in Rod Laver Arena: pounding big serves and flat groundstrokes and taking away time and Swiatek’s shot at the title with a 6-4, 6-4 victory.“It does not matter so much what court you start the tournament on as it does what court you finish the tournament on,” Rybakina said slowly and calmly a couple of hours later.Rybakina, who is 6 feet and has what tennis people call “easy power,” proved last July what she can do when she gets on a roll, rumbling past a series of Grand Slam champions and better-ranked, better-known players to win women’s singles at Wimbledon.A second major title is within reach if she maintains the form she showed against Danielle Collins in the third round and against Swiatek on Sunday. Lean with long limbs, Rybakina (pronounced ree-BOK-eena) can generate astonishing pace even in relatively slow conditions, and though she seems to take little delight in doing so with her still-water approach to competition, she made it clear in an interview that there was plenty of fire behind her poker-face facade.“What you see is calm, but for sure inside I’m nervous like everybody, and I’m full of emotions,” she said. “I’ve been that way since I was a junior. Sometimes it’s good also to show the emotions, that you are actually there and you are fighting. But this is something where I am different from other players. Most players are trying to learn how to be calm. I already know, and sometimes I’m trying to show more.”There were hints of it Sunday, including the amused smile that flickered across her face as she saw the excitement of the young Australian girl who met her and Swiatek at the net before the match to take part in the coin toss.But for the most part, Rybakina was all business, opening up big breaches in Swiatek’s normally formidable defenses with her big-bang patterns and her ability to take full cuts at the ball inside the court and straight off the bounce.Swiatek has faltered in her two most recent significant tournaments: the semifinals of the WTA Finals and the fourth-round match on Sunday in Melbourne.Joel Carrett/EPA, via ShutterstockShe successfully attacked Swiatek’s forehand: hitting behind her on the run and ripping returns deep and at her body to capitalize on the extreme grip change Swiatek has to make after her serve.“For sure, if I feel physically strong and I’m healthy and I’m playing my best, it’s tough to compete against me, I understand that,” Rybakina said. “But also I’m trying to find my consistency throughout the year because it’s not easy with my big shots to avoid mistakes. But of course I’m trying to do less and less every match because I need to be focused, and it gets more difficult the better players you play.”The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Victoria Azarenka’s Deep Run: The Belarusian tennis player has taken a more process-oriented approach than in the past. The outcomes have been good so far.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Endless Games: As matches stretch into the early-morning hours, players have grown concerned for their health and performance.A New Style Star: Frances Tiafoe may have lost his shot at winning the Australian Open, but his swirly “himbo” look won him fashion points.Swiatek, the thoughtful Polish star, is the clear and deserving No. 1. She won the French Open and U.S. Open last year and six other tournaments, winning 37 consecutive singles matches from February to July.But she has faltered in the two most recent significant tournaments: cracking on big points and losing in the semifinals of the WTA Finals to Aryna Sabalenka in November and now losing in the fourth round in Melbourne.She looked edgy: blowing a 40-0 lead in the opening game to lose her serve and blowing a 3-0 lead in the second set to lose the match, striking groundstrokes into the net at critical phases. She has seemed overwrought during the Australian summer: sobbing in her chair after losing to Jessica Pegula of the United States in the United Cup team event this month.“For sure, the past two weeks have been pretty hard for me,” she said. “So I felt today that I didn’t have that much to, like, take from myself to fight even more.”Her conclusion: “I felt like I took a step back in terms of how I approach these tournaments, and I maybe wanted it a little bit too hard. So I’m going to try to chill out a little bit more.”If you went by the seedings, Sunday’s result was an upset. Rybakina is seeded 22nd, but that is misleading. She got no ranking points for winning Wimbledon because the tours stripped the tournament of points in retaliation for its decision to bar Russian and Belarusian players after the invasion of Ukraine.Rybakina, born and raised in Russia before switching allegiance to Kazakhstan in 2018, was not affected by the ban, but without the 2,000 points normally allotted to the singles champion, she did not get a rankings boost for her victory.With those points, she would be comfortably in the top 10 and would also have qualified for last year’s eight-player WTA Finals, where another mother lode of points was available.Though she and her team appealed to the WTA to give her a wild card for the event based on her Wimbledon victory, the WTA did not grant the request.“I think she deserved it,” Stefano Vukov, her coach, said on Sunday. “And people also don’t realize that players get big bonuses from their sponsors for finishing top five or top 10 that can add up to millions of dollars, so not getting the points from Wimbledon definitely cost her.”Representing Kazakhstan makes it more challenging to market her globally than if she represented, say, a Grand Slam nation. For Vukov, that is a part of the reason she has received more Off Broadway court assignments than a typical first-time Wimbledon champion.“Where you come from has a big impact on the respect you might get on tour,” he said. “Not to be prejudiced or negative about it, but it is what it is. The biggest markets we have are the U.S. and China. You might get more recognition if you are from the U.S. than maybe from Kazakhstan, which is totally understandable. In Kazakhstan, she gets huge recognition, but worldwide, internationally, it does affect things.”Vukov is an extrovert compared with his player. “That’s why it works very well between me and Elena,” he said. “Whatever she’s thinking, I’m probably expressing it. I hope.”He said he had considered complaining to tournament directors about court assignments but refrained because ultimately “people are going to promote who they want to promote.”“Look, I think we don’t need to prove anything to anyone,” he said. “I think people know her quality and how good she is and how much she can win. She just needs to keep on going down this road, and that’s it and win as much as possible. I see her as a bit the Djokovic of the women: You got to win maybe a couple more Grand Slams to get recognized.”In Melbourne, she will now need to get past another major champion, Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia. Ostapenko, the surprise 2017 French Open champion, outplayed and outslugged the American 18-year-old Coco Gauff on Sunday, prevailing, 7-5, 6-3, as she pounced on Gauff’s second serves, hit 30 winners and repeatedly forced the speedy Gauff into errors with her pace.“I still feel like I’ve improved a lot,” said Gauff, who teared up in her postmatch news conference. “I still feel like when you play a player like her and she plays really well, it’s like there’s nothing you can do.”Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia, right, met with Coco Gauff of the United States at the net after their fourth-round match.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe other quarterfinal in the top half of the draw will match the two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka against Pegula, the last American woman in singles. But Ostapenko’s quarterfinal against Rybakina on Tuesday is guaranteed to be the higher-velocity affair, and Rybakina will have more support than usual. For the first time at a major tournament, both her parents are in Melbourne along with her older sister Anna.Her parents, based in Moscow, have often been separated from the 23-year-old Rybakina during her pro career. Her two main training bases at this stage are in Bratislava, Slovakia, and Dubai, where she spent the preseason with her expanded team that now includes a full-time fitness trainer. But Rybakina, whose parents have also joined her in Kazakhstan, now has the means to reunite her family more often.“It was not easy in the last years, not only me being new on the tour but also how the world changed with all the pandemic and everything,” she said. “It was really a crazy time for everybody, not only the athletes. But, for sure, it means a lot.”They will all be in her player box on Tuesday: in Rod Laver Arena. More

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    At the Australian Open, American Men Advance en Masse

    Sebastian Korda, Ben Shelton, J.J. Wolf and Tommy Paul all made the fourth round in singles. Not since 2004 have four men from the United States gone this far in Melbourne.MELBOURNE, Australia — There were 94,854 fans at the Australian Open on Saturday, setting a single-day attendance record.But perhaps even more surprising than the size of the audience was that four American men remained in contention for the men’s singles title: Sebastian Korda, Ben Shelton, J.J. Wolf and Tommy Paul.None of them have made it this far at the Open until now, and Shelton, the youngest at age 20, had never played in Australia or anywhere outside the United States until a few weeks ago.The two highest-ranked Americans and most likely candidates to go deeper in Melbourne are missing. Taylor Fritz, the No. 8 seed, and Frances Tiafoe, the No. 16 seed, have already been eliminated. Reilly Opelka, the imposing 7-foot-tall big server who broke into the top 20 last year, is recovering from hip surgery. Mackenzie McDonald, the former U.C.L.A. star who upset Rafael Nadal in the second round, was beaten in his next match.But Korda, Shelton, Wolf and Paul all advanced to the round of 16, a sign of the renewed strength and depth of American men’s tennis.“These young guys are coming up, pushing each other,” said Dean Goldfine, one of Shelton’s coaches. “I think that’s one of the things that’s contributing to our success right now as a country. We have these waves. It’s not just one guy here, one guy there. We’ve got a bunch of them, and I think there’s a friendly rivalry there.”The last time there were four American men in the fourth round of the Australian Open in singles was in 2004 with Andre Agassi, James Blake, Robby Ginepri and Andy Roddick. All were stars or established threats, though it was Ginepri’s deepest run at that stage in a major.Tommy Paul will face Roberto Bautista Agut, a Spanish veteran who is seeded 24th.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMost of this year’s group is just getting started. Paul, 25, is the oldest: an acrobatic all-court player with excellent timing who can take the ball extremely early. He also reached the fourth round at Wimbledon last year and broke into the top 30 under the tutelage of veteran coach Brad Stine. He switched racket brands in the off-season — often a risky move — but has been sharp in Melbourne and dominated fellow American Jenson Brooksby on Saturday, winning in straight sets.Paul will face Roberto Bautista Agut, a Spanish veteran who is seeded 24th and is the only seeded player left in the bottom quarter of the draw.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.A New Style Star: Frances Tiafoe may have lost his shot at winning the Australian Open, but his swirly “himbo” look won him fashion points.Caroline Garcia: The top-five player has spoken openly about her struggles with an eating disorder. She is at the Australian Open chasing her first Grand Slam singles title.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Endless Games: As matches in professional tennis stretch into the early-morning hours, players have grown concerned for their health and performance.The other players in that section are Shelton and Wolf, former collegiate standouts who will face each other on Monday. Shelton won the N.C.A.A. singles title last year for the University of Florida, where he was coached by his father Bryan Shelton, a former ATP Tour player. Wolf, 24, played for three years at Ohio State, where he was an All-American and the Big Ten player of the year in 2019.Ben Shelton and Wolf have become friendly since Shelton turned pro last August. “I had seen him play in college tennis, but he was older than me, so we never competed against each other,” Shelton said of Wolf. “We’re good friends, like to joke around a lot, have a lot of locker room banter.”Both are solidly built and powerful. Wolf has one of the most penetrating forehands in the game. Shelton, a left-hander, has one of the most intimidating serves, frequently surpassing 124 miles per hour. He has won 83 percent of his first-serve points in Melbourne and 64 percent of his second-serve points. Shelton was not broken on Saturday as he prevailed over Alexei Popyrin, the Australian who upset Fritz in the second round and again had a big home crowd ready to support him in John Cain Arena.“They kind of set the tone when I walked out on the court, and I got booed,” said Shelton, laughing. “Similar to some away matches and college atmospheres that I have been at but definitely amplified today. The sound in there kind of just vibrates.”But Shelton’s dominant play in his victory, 6-3, 7-6 (4), 6-4, often meant that the arena was unusually quiet. His shouts of “Come on!” reverberated through the space.“Honestly, if this is the way he plays day in, day out, the guy is top 10 in six months,” Popyrin said.Consistency can be elusive at this level, particularly when you take the risks that Shelton does. But he continues to make a big impression as he embarks on his first full season on tour.“I definitely wouldn’t have thought that I would be here in this moment six months ago or four months ago,” said Shelton, who was ranked outside the top 500 in May.This is only his second Grand Slam tournament after losing in the first round of last year’s U.S. Open, but he already has guaranteed himself a spot in the top 70 and also equaled his father’s best performance in a Grand Slam event. Bryan Shelton reached the fourth round of Wimbledon as a qualifier in 1994.Ben Shelton celebrated after defeating Alexei Popyrin.James Ross/EPA, via ShutterstockBryan Shelton is not in Melbourne because he is in the middle of the collegiate tennis season. Florida had a match on Saturday, but he got up early to watch his son’s match in Australia because of the time difference.“I think I messed up his sleep schedule a little bit,” Ben Shelton said.Both Shelton and Wolf come from athletic families. Wolf’s sister Danielle also played tennis at Ohio State, and his mother, Brooke, played for Miami of Ohio. His grandfather Charles Wolf coached the Cincinnati Royals and the Detroit Pistons in the N.B.A.But the American in the fourth round with the most successful athletic family is the 22-year-old Korda. His parents were leading professional tennis players: his father, Petr, was No. 2 on the ATP Tour and won the Australian Open; his mother, Regina, was ranked in the top 30 on the WTA Tour. Korda’s two older sisters, Nelly and Jessica, are leading women’s professional golfers: Nelly has been ranked No. 1 in the world; Jessica is currently No. 18.“I’m definitely the worst athlete in the family so far,” Sebastian Korda said on Friday after defeating the former world No. 1 Daniil Medvedev in straight sets in the third round for the biggest victory of his career.But Korda, seeded 29th at the Australian Open, looks poised to move up in his family’s rankings. At 6-foot-5, he has a fluid, deceptively powerful game full of variety and though he has come close to major upsets against the game’s biggest stars, holding match points before losing to Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, he held firm against the 7th-seeded Medvedev in Rod Laver Arena to win, 7-6 (7), 6-3, 7-6 (4).Korda’s American peers were closely watching him as they prepared for their own challenges.“I was in my hotel room, stretching and taking care of myself, but I was glued to the TV,” Wolf said. “He was playing amazing.”J.J. Wolf in action during the first round of the Australian Open.Lukas Coch/EPA, via Shutterstock More

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    Inside the Battle to Control, and Fix, Tennis

    The sport’s hit Netflix series and rising collection of young stars has investors bullish on tennis, which is poised for a once-in-a-generation moment of disruption.Walking the grounds of Melbourne Park, where the Australian Open is in full swing, one could easily believe that all is well and peaceful in professional tennis.Stadiums are packed. Champagne flows. Players are competing for more than $53 million in prize money at a major tournament the Swiss star Roger Federer nicknamed “the happy Slam.”Behind the scenes though, over the past 18 months a coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for disruption in a sport long known for its dysfunctional management and disparate power structure.The figures include Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager and hard-core tennis hobbyist who built a tennis court atop his office tower in Midtown Manhattan. Ackman is funding a fledgling players’ organization led by the Serbian star Novak Djokovic. The group is searching for ways to grow the sport’s financial pie and the size of the players’ slice. In their ideal world, one day there might even be a major player-run event akin to a fifth Grand Slam tournament.Earlier this month, the group announced its core tenets, which include protecting player rights, securing fair compensation and improving work conditions. Players have about had it with matches that start close to midnight, end near dawn and put them at risk of injury, like Andy Murray’s second-round win in Melbourne that ended after 4 a.m. Friday. The group also announced its first eight-player executive committee, which includes some of the top young men and women in the game.There is also CVC Capital Partners, the Luxembourg-based private equity firm that has been working for months to close a $150 million equity investment in the WTA Tour that it views as a first step to becoming a prime player in tennis.Then there is Sinclair Broadcast Group, the American media conglomerate that owns the Tennis Channel, which wants to expand globally and has been trying to entice the people who run tennis to embrace that effort.All of them see tennis as uniquely positioned for growth, as a new generation of stars tries to take up the mantle of the last one, a story Netflix highlights in the new documentary series “Break Point.”“This is definitely the time to go long on tennis, 100 percent,” said Ackman, the noted short-seller best known for betting on a plunging real estate market ahead of the Great Recession. “You look at the global popularity of the sport and revenues and it is totally anomalous.”Through his philanthropic fund, the investor Bill Ackman is essentially bankrolling Novak Djokovic’s Professional Tennis Players Association, a new players’ union, and a player-controlled, for-profit entity.Elsa/Getty ImagesAckman has largely given up his noisy activist approach to investing, but tennis, he and others point out, is one of the few global sports and the only one in which men and women regularly share a tournament. That has helped it attract roughly one billion fans worldwide, with nearly equal numbers of male and female devotees.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.No Spotlight, No Problem: In tennis, there is a long history of success and exposure crushing champions or sucking the joy out of them. In this Australian Open, players under the radar have gone far.Victoria Azarenka’s ‘Little Steps’: The Belarusian player took a more process-oriented approach than in the past. The outcomes were strong.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Endless Games: As matches stretch into the early-morning hours, players have grown concerned for their health and performance.Tennis executives estimate the sport collects roughly $2.5 billion in total revenues each year. However, it collects far less revenue per fan than other sports. The N.F.L. has a fraction of the number of fans but some $18 billion in revenues. Tennis players also receive a much smaller percentage of those revenues than athletes in other sports receive, and they have to pay for their coaches, training and much of their travel. Aside from a handful of premium events like Grand Slams and some of the Masters 1000 competitions, many tennis tournaments still have the feel of mid-tier minor league baseball.The cash crunch has been especially acute for the WTA Tour ever since it suspended its operations in China in December 2021, retaliating against a government that had seemingly silenced a Chinese player after she accused a former top government official of sexually assaulting her. The move, led by the tour chief executive Steve Simon, represented a rare moment when a major organization prioritized morals and human rights over the bottom line.China, the host country for nine tournaments, including the annual season-ending WTA Finals, had committed hundreds of millions of dollars to women’s tennis for a decade. The WTA has been hunting for new cash ever since the suspension, and with good reason. Some weeks, the disparity with the men’s tour is startling — in Auckland, New Zealand, this month, men competed for more than $700,000 in prize money while the women’s purse was $260,000.The jockeying for power has played out against the backdrop of significant infighting within men’s professional golf prompted by the debut of LIV Golf, the Saudi-backed effort to create a rival to the PGA Tour that has fractured the sport and caused some of its biggest stars to disappear from all events but the four major tournaments.The established cast of power players who run tennis — including Simon, his counterparts on the men’s pro tour, the four Grand Slams and the International Tennis Federation — have watched that unfold and worked to secure their primacy, even as they acknowledge that tennis has to change with the times.“The status quo is not an option,” said Stacey Allaster, the tournament director of the U.S. Open.Allaster, who has previously run everything from second-tier tournaments to the WTA Tour, described tennis as an “insular” sport that does not focus enough on what its fans want. “What is the road map for trial and experimenting?” Allaster asked.From left, Iga Swiatek, Stacey Allaster and Ons Jabeur after Swiatek beat Jabeur in the 2022 U.S. Open final. Allaster, the tournament’s director, said tennis has not focused enough on what fans want.Elsa/Getty ImagesAndrea Gaudenzi, the former player who is the chairman of the men’s tour, the ATP, said all the interest from private investors signaled that the sport was headed in the right direction.At a private players meeting last week in Melbourne, Gaudenzi heralded the ATP’s move to raise prize money by 21 percent, to a record $217.9 million this year. Unfortunately for the players, the ATP represents only about a quarter of the sport’s revenues. The Grand Slams collect most of the rest of the sport’s revenues, with the players’ cut at those events generally far less.Gaudenzi said his organization has had its own discussions with CVC executives but no deals are imminent.“Sometimes you need a catalyst event and someone helping you, and guiding you,” he said.That fallout from that catalyst event — the WTA’s withdrawal from China — is ongoing.The government of China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has given no indication that it will pursue a credible and transparent inquiry into the allegations from the player, Peng Shuai, which were made in November 2021 on her Chinese social media account. In November 2022, Simon called the pending deal with CVC “a very complex business decision and business move we need to work through.”CVC, which wanted to close the deal by the end of last year, has said little publicly about it. People familiar with the deal who were not authorized to discuss confidential financial information said it includes a $150 million payment for a 20 percent ownership stake in the WTA Tour.As CVC and the WTA closed in on the deal during the fall, executives with Sinclair, which acquired the Tennis Channel in 2016, expressed their growing concern that after building an international network and being one of the highest-paying partners in the sport, CVC might try to elbow out the company if it reaches a similar agreement with the ATP, some of the people said.In the short term, the women’s tour is expected to use a significant portion of the money from CVC to increase prize money for players, ensuring that men and women receive equal prize money at all the tour events they play together. That, however, will do little to produce a return for CVC, which is in this to make money.To do that during the next decade, people familiar with CVC’s thinking said, company executives want to increase collaboration with the men’s tour and hold more combined events. Then they could consolidate assets, such as media rights and sponsorships, and sell them together in hopes a combined product would fetch a significantly higher price than what each tour collects separately. That could help CVC gain a foothold within the ATP and flex its muscle.Those plans jibe with some of Gaudenzi’s priorities for the ATP, which include holding as many as nine combined events with the women’s tour, because those are the most popular with fans, creating with the Grand slams close to 200 days of the most desirable competition. The executive committee for the Professional Tennis Players Association includes Djokovic, Jabeur, the rising Spanish player Paula Badosa and Hubert Hurkacz.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesThe vision may break down, however, when the tours try to figure out how to divide revenue. Men know their tour is more profitable and have long resisted equal partnerships with the women’s tour.Gaudenzi said more men, especially the younger generation, understand the importance of equality and are much more open to the concept of joining forces with the women than they were when he played in the 1990s.“They understand the value, you just have to show them the business case,” he said.He added: “We are in the entertainment business, so we have to entertain people, not ourselves.”Also, the plan de-emphasizes smaller tournaments, where players can collect appearance fees. A few of those are the most successful and popular events on the tour, such as the Estoril Open on the Portuguese Riviera, where players love the packed stadiums, seaside setting and full embrace of some of the region’s wealthiest companies, as well as the country’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.Ackman said much of the maneuvering he has seen represents old-world thinking. That is partly why he aligned with the players, who have the most incentive to push for change. They are stars of the show but receive roughly 15 to 25 percent of the revenues — about half of what athletes in other sports receive.“Tennis is an oligopoly, and oligopolies are not innovative, and nonprofit ones are even less innovative,” Ackman said.Through his philanthropic fund, Ackman is helping to bankroll Djokovic’s Professional Tennis Players Association, a new players’ union, and the Winners Alliance, a player-controlled, for-profit entity, though he said he has no designs on profiting from tennis.Ackman made it clear that the P.T.P.A. was not seeking to launch a new tour, though in theory having an event like men’s golf’s annual Players Championship — considered a fifth major in some circles because of its top field and rich purse — would be appealing. He and the P.T.P.A. recently hired Ahmad Nassar, who for years ran the N.F.L. Players Association’s for-profit company, Players Inc.Nassar hopes to convince players and their agents to sign over their group licensing rights, which the Winners Alliance could in turn sell — to a video game company, a luxury hotel chain that could offer both payments and discount deals, or any number of potential corporate investors.Ahmad Nassar, hired as the executive director of the Professional Tennis Players Association, formerly ran the N.F.L. players’ union’s for-profit company.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesThe P.T.P.A. spent much of the past six months recruiting its executive committee. The group now includes Paula Badosa, the rising Spanish player, and Ons Jabeur of Tunisia, the No. 2 women’s singles player and 2022 Wimbledon finalist who is the sport’s first major star from a Muslim country. Jabeur made it clear the organization doesn’t want any part of a golf-style dispute.“We don’t want to fight with everyone,” Jabeur said last Saturday, while expressing her determination to help the players get their due. “We just want to make our sport great.” More